There used to be a sitcom on television called The Jeffersons. 

The Jeffersons

 Their theme song went “movin’ on up, to the East side” because they were coming up in the world to a better financial position.  I love to take little diddies and put a word or two of my own in there to make it mine.  This is one of them.

My movin’ up has nothing to do with being well off monetarily and everything to do with being well off mentally.  It’s been a struggle to move up now for about half my life:  a long, long time.  First was a bad marriage and divorce to overcome while coping with a child not yet diagnosed with schizophrenia, being bewildered at every turn with every psychiatrist from the one who specialized in children to the one that worked for the local health department, and all the others in between; the death of another child’s best friend and the subsequent battle with drug addiction; depression and anxiety problems; the death of my second husband and years of mourning what could have been, what could have been done differently.  Pain… and more pain. 

The only reason I mention those things at all is to tell you about my good, dear friends without whom I could not and cannot live.  They are the reason I am movin’ on up.  They are the rocks that anchor my distraught psyche, the rocks upon which God has set me, the pavilion wherein He has hidden me.  I so totally love them all. 

praying friend

They have prayed my son alive because I am as certain as I sit here that he would have died without their shawl of prayer wrapped around him. 

hugging

 They have wrapped us in their arms as well with hugs that left us giddy with delight and comfort. (You  know who you are, Howard.)  They have come to me in the night, flashlight in hand, when I feared I had run over my little cat, Bo, to look for him, all three kids:  Joseph, Tyler, Emily, and Mom Cheryl.

Dolores (a/k/a Grandma to Kate) gets out in the cold to fetch me a gallon of milk so I don’t have to get the grandgirls out; brings me blog-warming gifts (picture coming soon); and teaches me to be kind and loving and accepting of all people.  Terah, who loves me with agape love that fills my soul with lightness, who makes a way to bring me back from the precipice of darkness, who finds my Eagle’s Nest that I might hide under the shadow of His wing (Psalm 17:8).  Jeri Lyn, who takes my burdens into herself to ease my morbid obsessions, that I might not worry about the evil that could befall my little ones.  Joy, who stood vigil at my husband’s side as he lay dying.  Alberta, who always has my back, always worries about me, always seeing about me.  These are only a few; God gave me many.

The study group who saw me through that first year of extreme sadness; the group God brought together just for me.  Ah, how He loves me.  This group who are now my sisters, these women whom I will forever have a bond.  How I love them.